Heartfelt
by Melira
Summary: What do you wish for when you know you're dying? This time, the injuries Barry received are fatal and he knows it. One-shot. AU for major character death.


_Disclaimer: All I own is the idea for what happens in this story, nothing more and nothing less._

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The only sound he could hear was the frantic beating of his own heart. His heart. Trying to keep him alive by pumping blood through his battered body. It hadn't caught up with his brain yet. His brain. Telling him it was over. Knowing there was no chance he would recover. Not this time. His rapid healing had saved his life more than once, but just as Doctor Wells had once put it: "You can't heal when you're dead!" And he was dead, he could feel it.

The cascade of stones that had come onto him with bullet-like speed had achieved what so many Metas before had failed to. They had damaged more than his body could repair. With his fastened senses he had felt every single impact, had noted every injury. He could practically hear Caitlyn recite them as she always did when she lectured him after having to patch him up. And he could imagine the screens in the cortex all lighting up at once and blinking while trying to depict the damage he had just suffered.

A shattered foot, a dislocated knee, a broken femur that had punctured the femoral artery, a ruptured lung with resulting pneumothorax, both bones of his left forearm in pieces, one of them piercing through the skin, and a basilar skull fracture. There was no coming back from this, not with any medical attention in the world and he knew it. He felt how his body tried to repair itself but it had no energy left. He couldn't breath with one of his lungs collapsed and by the second he lost more blood through the gaping hole in his thigh, only sped up by the frantic beating of his heart.

Apparently the only part of him still fully functioning. Funny, how with some people the heart was the first organ to give up and with him it was the one that kept fighting even after all hope was lost. He wondered why that was. Maybe because his heart had sustained so much damage over the years, had been broken time and time again, so it had learned to keep fighting because there had always been a tomorrow. A next day worth living for. Maybe it just needed more time to accept that this time it was too late already. He listened to its beating, the fast pace that became weaker with every step, but just like a marathon runner refused to give up. He wondered for how much longer it would manage to keep going. Would it be enough for someone to reach him? He wasn't too far from the others and they would have noticed what had happened the instant the first stone had hit him.

His mind automatically showed him images of their reactions. Caitlyn with wide eyes, staring unbelieving at the screens, Cisco trying to reach him through the comms and loudly praying that this was just a malfunction of his beloved suit, Joe demanding that this simply couldn't be, right?! and Iris... Iris pressing her hand to her mouth and holding her breath for a moment before springing into action and wanting to go find him.

He asked himself if he would want it. To be found by her. His still beating heart screamed yes. He needed to see her if he wanted to keep fighting for his life. Or at least to see her one last time before never opening his eyes again. But his brain argued against it. He could only imagine how bad he must look right now and the thought of her seeing him like this? No, he would never want that for her. However much the selfish part of him wanted to say good-bye to her, to study her beautiful face once again, the other, stronger part knew it would be too much for her. After Eddie and her mother, his death would be hard on her no matter what, there was no reason to additionally burn the image of his bloody, broken body into her mind.

He started praying that the others would reach him before her, that they would get the chance to cover all but his face before she got to see him. But as he knew her, they wouldn't. She wouldn't let them get ahead of her and if she didn't want something, it didn't happen. At least as long as it was in her power to stop it. That was one of the things he had always admired most about her. She was stubborn to the point at which she could achieve pretty much anything if only she wanted it badly enough. And no matter how many sleepless nights that caused her overprotective father and boyfriend, neither of them would ever want to truly change it.

If only she would use this stubbornness to get over his death. But he knew, she wouldn't. This would be the one time too often someone had died on her and it would take her a long time to recover from it. She would eventually, he was sure of it, but it would be longer than he liked. He only hoped that at least her friends would be there for her and each other, that they would get through this together rather than drift apart as they had after Eddie's and Ronnie's death.

He could feel his heart getting weaker, could hear its beating slowing further and further down and with every of its laboured attempts of keeping him alive he could sense the end drawing nearer. He still didn't feel as much pain as he should have with all the injuries, and now even his mind started to cloud. His thoughts got fuzzier by the moment and with every passing second he had more difficulties concentrating. He focused his mind on the mental image of Iris that he kept and for one last time, Barry Allen felt how much he loved her.

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 _A/N: Don't ask me, why I wrote this, because I have no idea. I usually don't do AU, especially not with differences this huge, but somehow... I was watching one episode or another and right in the middle of it paused to scribble this down. To kill Barry. Why would I do that?!  
Anyways, I hope you liked it in the weird way sad stories are likeable. If so or not I would love to hear about in a review :-)  
And last but not least: I'm not a native speaker, so please tell me about mistakes I made, I want to get better.  
_


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